Calendar Math

At IDEA Mission we include a K-2 calendar math portion in our daily morning meeting.  It's taught in the Language of the Day (meaning one day English, the next day Spanish;  you might ask how we do that in team teaching situations where the English teacher is in one classroom and the Spanish teacher is in another--at the suggestion of Dr. Mercuri, what we did last year was gather both homerooms in the same classroom.  For example, on Spanish day, both homerooms taught by a Spanish/English teaching team go into the Spanish teacher's classroom and gather on the rug for the morning meeting in Spanish, whereas on English days they all gather in the English teacher's classroom.  Another side benefit of this setup is that each teacher gets an additional 20 min personal prep time every other day!)

Here are some bilingual resources for calendar math that I found on PSJA's website:

Calendar Math Questions English
Calendar Math Questions Spanish

Spanish Intervention Resources

Here are some more Spanish and bilingual resources for additional support, reteach, and intervention.  Most are from PSJA's website--good stuff!

Download handbook for Struggling Spanish Readers
Download PowerPoint about differences between Spanish & English literacy (by Kathy Escamilla)
Download presentation about Teaching Spanish Literacy in the U.S. (from the Illinois Resource Center)
Download Article: Selecting Materials to Teach Spanish to Spanish Speakers

LEER MAS I: ACTIVIDADES
Grupo A Apéndice
Grupo A Lenguaje Oral
Grupo B Apéndice
Grupo B Conocimiento Fonológico
Grupo C Apéndice
Grupo C Conocimiento de la letra impresa
Grupo D Apéndice 1
Grupo D Apéndice 2
Grupo D Apéndice 3
Grupo D Relación entre las letras y sonidos
Grupo E Apéndice
Grupo E Fluidez
Grupo F Apéndice
Grupo F Comprensión
Grupo G Apéndice
Grupo G Expresión escrita

SCIENCE IN SPANISH
TAKS 1 Review Science Spanish 
TAKS 2 Review Science Spanish 
TAKS 3 Review Science Spanish  
TAKS 4 Review Science Spanish  

ABC BOOKS (Great for PK & K Teachers)
ABC Book English (Block)
ABC Book English (D'Nealian)
ABC Book Spanish (Block)
ABC Book Spanish (D'Nealian)
ABC Game Spanish 

Literacy Curriculum Work

For the next week or so, I'm working on some Spanish curriculum for the district--exciting that there will be Spanish materials developed at the district level!  I'm posting the K - 1 HFW lists--organized into levels that children will progress through, some by the end of 1st grade, others by mid-2nd grade.

HFW English Level 1
HFW English Level 2
HFW English Level 3
HFW English Level 4
HFW English Level 5
HFW English Level 6
HFW English Level 7
HFW English Level 8
HFW English Level 9
HFW English Level 10

HFW Spanish Level 1 
HFW Spanish Level 2
HFW Spanish Level 3
HFW Spanish Level 4
HFW Spanish Level 5
HFW Spanish Level 6
HFW Spanish Level 7
HFW Spanish Level 8
HFW Spanish Level 9
HFW Spanish Level 10

We found that our new text adoption's phonics scope and sequence in Kinder could do with some "accelerating" and needed a few additional skills/objectives, so I developed these simple revisions:
Kinder Phonics Accelerated (English & Spanish)

I also found these Bloom's Taxonomy resources in both Spanish & English--super helpful for unit and lesson planning!
Bloom's Taxonomy English
Bloom's Taxonomy Spanish

Consultant, Year Two

Working with a consultant has been expensive but very worth it.  Because another school in the district, IDEA Donna, is launching DL in Kinder this year, the principal wanted to partner with us on professional development, allowing us to spend more on Dr. Mercuri's consulting.  Here's the MOU we drafted and agreed upon with our consultant Dr. Mercuri.   Click here to download the Consulting MOU for 2010-11

Finalized Master Schedule for 2010 - 11

Even though I'm no longer the principal of IDEA Mission (decided this summer to leave the school in the capable hands of my former assistant principal), I'm still plan to keep adding to this blog as I continue my work in another position (more on this later!).  Here's the update schedule for this coming school year:

Revised Master Schedule 2010-11  (with 2nd grade change:  to prepare for the 3rd - 5th grade model, this year's 2nd graders will receive Math in English and Our World in Spanish--this may or may not be the case for the following year's 2nd graders.  Part of me thinks our new K/1 model should extend into 2nd grade the following year, including Teaching Fellows and the weekly language switch for all content areas, Math/Our World included.  This year needed to be different, however, as this year's 2nd graders have been our "guinea pigs" and haven't had full DL since Kindergarten the way the class below them has had)


Thoughts I've had for 3rd - 5th grade:  This would be intense on the budget, but a "wishlist" setup for 3rd - 5th grade would be 5 teacher teams.  The responsibilities would be as follows:

English Team Teacher (2 per grade level--teaches 2 homerooms)

   * ELA

   * Science

Spanish Team Teacher (2 per grade level--teaches 2 homerooms)

   * SLA

   * Social Studies

Math Teacher (1 per grade level--teaches 90 min math blocks to all 4 homerooms)

   * Math (in English)

I know it doesn't maintain a perfect 50/50 language division but it's critical, for testing purposes, that the students have math and science instruction in English in the upper grades.  Now, if this wouldn't work budgetarily (and, unfortunately, it likely won't) then we'd have to get really really creative and think about how we can get the above content areas with their assigned language of instruction into a two-teacher only teaming situation.  More thinking...nothing has proved impossible yet!

Spanish & Dual Language Resources Galore

One of the most challenging aspects of launching a dual language program is finding and purchasing resources.  Here's a document with lots of places you can go for bilingual resources--many are free.  Hope you find this helpful! Click for List of Dual Language and Spanish Resources

(P.S. If you know of other sites or resources that should be on this list, please leave a comment and I'll be sure to add it.  Thanks for sharing!)

Spring Jamaica 2010

We've worked hard this year to celebrate family, language, and culture in even richer ways.  Our 1st Annual Spring Jamaica (held at the Veterans Pavilion on S. Inspiration Rd) was a huge success!  Children and families celebrated spring, family, and culture through food, games, singing, and dancing.  Spearheaded by our amazing Assistant Principal, Mrs. Lozano, everything came together beautifully and it ended up being a highly successful fundraiser.  Enjoy some pics from the big event.

Jose-Luis Orozco Concert

We celebrated Dia de los Niños and 5 de mayo with a fantastic concert by bilingual children's songwriter and performer Jose-Luis Orozco.  He performed at Quest (paid for by money raised by Mission's parent association) so Mission and Quest K - 2 students enjoyed a true musical treat.  Here are some pics from the event--we hope to make it an annual tradition!

 Here's a video clip from an appearance Jose-Luis Orozco made on Telemundo:


Telemundo - De Mañanita from José-Luis Orozco on Vimeo.

Language Standards

I've been working on clear second-language development expectations that could be attached to our quarterly report card to show measurable progress toward second language acquisition. Right now we use the Pre-LAS (Kinder) and LAS-Links assessments (Grades 1 and up) to measure language acquisition, but those are only administered at the beginning and end of the year--we need to teach, assess, and track more "bite-sized" language objectives throughout the year.  Here's what we've got so far for English Language Development (have yet to tackle Spanish Language Development!)...

 Download: Language Development Report Card Standards

What's in a name?

It turns out that the nomenclature of "lead teacher" and "teaching fellow" was already leading some people to conceptualize the idea as a "one teacher's in charge and the other follows" deal.  No!!  I spoke with a few teachers who came to me concerned that this mindset was already developing, so we talked about different names for the program.  I'm now moving toward this:

MENTOR TEACHER:  More experienced teacher (might be more experienced in total years taught, though in a couple of cases it might be simply more experience teaching at IDEA)

PARTNER TEACHER:  The less experienced teacher partnered with a mentor teacher.  They are most definitely full-time professional certified teachers, but are in an intense apprenticeship with less demanding planning responsibilities at the beginning and with high levels of support & instructional coaching feedback throughout the year.  However, we expect them to be equal partners in the planning of the classroom environment, culture, and instruction--supported by their mentor teacher.

LEAD TEACHER:  Both would be lead teachers...just for different halves of the day (depending on the language of instruction).  When one member of the team is lead teaching, the other is assisting/supporting.

I'm sure my thinking will continue to change and develop, but that's where I am for today!

Teaching Fellow Program Overview